SAN FRANCISCO -- On Monday, Jurgen Klinsmann described the World Cup as "where the big music is played." He should know.

"He knows what it takes to be a world champion," Landon Donovan said a few days before Klinsmann decided that Donovan himself did not have that quality and cut him from the final U.S. World Cup roster. "And none of us know that."

This is why Klinsmann is here: for the next five weeks and then, four years from now, for another five weeks. For the big stage and the big music. This is why he was hired in 2011, becoming the most accomplished coach the United States has ever had. His contract was extended last winter.

"Two and half years in, we have the best record we've ever had during a 2Â½-year cycle," U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati said Monday. "All those things are very positive, but we all understand the big test is to come."

Klinsmann, 49, has played in three World Cups, winning the World Cup in 1990 with West Germany, scoring three goals in that tournament. He scored five goals in the 1994 World Cup and three more in 1998, including one against the United States. In 2006, he coached Germany to the World Cup semifinals, a pressure-filled assignment, managing the home team in the first global sporting event his home country had hosted since unification. He is a global superstar, a well-spoken citizen of the world whose resume and perspective inspires confidence.

But some of that confidence was shaken last week with Klinsmann's decision to leave Donovan off the roster. The news created headlines, a social media storm and raging debates -- as though the United States is an actual soccer country. That was a first for U.S. Soccer.

Pundits from all over weighed in, including former U.S. coach Bruce Arena, who noted that if there were 23 players better than Landon Donovan, then the U.S. should win the World Cup. Which needless to say, no one expects.

This isn't the first time Klinsmann has been doubted. In 2006, he made several controversial decisions, but none bigger than choosing Jens Lehmann as his starting goalkeeper over legend and team captain Oliver Kahn. That decision created a backlash that dwarfed the Donovan omission.

"This was my most difficult decision of my time as coach," Klinsmann said at the time, a statement he echoed last week when saying that cutting Donovan was the most difficult decision of his career.

Klinsmann gave plenty of hints along the way that Donovan was not in good standing. Some believe his feelings about Donovan may go all the way back to January 2009, when Klinsmann was coaching Bayern Munich and convinced his bosses to bring Donovan over to Germany on loan. Donovan did not perform well -- his third unsuccessful stint in the Bundesliga. Klinsmann was fired a few months later, after less than a year on the job.

Whatever the roots, there seemed to be a disconnect between Klinsmann and Donovan from the start of Klinsmann's national team tenure. Klinsmann, the son of Stuttgart bakers famous for their pretzel making, signed his first professional contract at age 16. He played for clubs around Europe including Inter Milan, Tottenham and Bayern Munich. He announced his retirement in 1992, only to find he couldn't leave the game he loved so much and he continued playing for another six years, finally retiring at age 34.

He played with an energy and joy, celebrating goals with wild abandon and gaining such a reputation for diving that one paper described his reaction to a foul as "the death scene from Camille." He had a curiosity about the world, learning to speak several languages. At 19, he spent a month in the United States. One of the world's most famous soccer players, the superstar drove -- not a Mercedes or a Porsche -- but a 1967 convertible Volkswagen bug with a sticker of Snoopy in a rowboat asking, "Ist es noch weit bis America?" Is it much farther to America?

After retiring, Klinsmann moved to California, married an American and began raising his children in Huntington Beach, commuting to Germany when he was coaching, much to the consternation of the German media. He is known for investigating new ways of training and being open to new-age techniques.

That would seem to be common ground with Donovan, who meditates, needs the right mental environment for success and lives in Manhattan Beach. But Klinsmann was clearly frustrated by Donovan. Donovan, who signed his first professional contract at 17, often seemed weary of the burden of being the face of American soccer for more than a decade. He is known to take chunks of games off, he took a leave in the middle of World Cup qualifying and never seemed fully committed to challenging himself to get better. In those ways, Donovan was the opposite of Klinsmann.

Does Klinsmann know what he's doing? We'll find out in the next few weeks. But he certainly knows more about World Cup success than anyone else in the U.S. program.

"His experience is in big moments," goalkeeper Tim Howard said. "He's not fazed by that. Hopefully we can read off of his demeanor. That will help us."